1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to reconfigurable computer networks. It relates particularly but not exclusively to methods of configuring a computer network to allow addition, deletion and movement of networked objects within the network, methods of network address translation for communications between an internal computer network and an external network, and a method of configuring a wireless computer network to allow movement of networked objects within the network
2. State of the Art
When Internet-enabled devices move from a network in one administrative domain to another, and even between networks in the same administrative domain, or between nodes within the same network, they usually need reconfiguration. As a concrete example, when personal computers running contemporary operating systems move from office to office, user intervention is often required to change the Internet configuration on these machines in order to suit disparate network environments.
This problem often manifests itself as a need to employ information technology and network professionals to perform such reconfiguration, or to assist users of the Internet-enabled devices to do so. In addition, network professionals may be needed to administer the networks themselves, resulting in a local support and maintenance burden on the owners and users of the Internet infrastructure.
Existing approaches to the problem such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) autoconfiguration help to alleviate the problem somewhat, but fail to solve it completely. Firstly, many of the existing approaches still require user intervention (albeit limited) in order to operate correctly. Secondly, adoption of these techniques has been slow and non-uniform to date. Thus, not all networks standardize on their use of the existing techniques, and there is a need to reconfigure Internet-enabled devices to use one technique or another (or none at all) as they are moved from one administrative domain to another.
An object of the present invention is to provide a solution to some or all of these problems.